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THE PROCLAMATION OP FREEDOM. 



S E RM O IS^ 



PKEACHED IN DORCHESTER, JANUARY 4, 1863, 



NATHANIEL HALL. 



REPRINTED FROM THE MONTHLY RELIGIOUS MAGAZINE. 



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BOSTON: 
CROSBY AND NICHOLS 

EBENEZER CLAPP, 

808 Washington St. 

1863. 



THE PROCLAMATION OP FREEDOM. 



SERMON 



PKEACHED IN DOKCHESTEE, JANUAKY 4, 1803, 



NATHANIEL HALL 



KEPEINTED FROM THE MONTHI^Y RELIGIOUS MAGAZI^'E. 



BOSTON: 
CROSBY AND NICHOLS 

EBENEZER CLAPP, 

■ 308 Washington St. 

1863. 






University Press: 

Welch, Bigelow, and Company, 

Cambridge. 









Y 



o 

CD 



SERMON. 



" The acceptable year of the Lord." — Luke iv. 19. 

The New Year broke upon us in a fulness of natural 
splendor. The stormy darkness of the day preceding served 
to increase, by contrast, what was in itself so inspiringly 
beautiful ; while the freshly-fallen snow, mantling all be- 
neath in radiant purity, reflected, through an atmosphere of 
transparent clearness, the cloudless glories of the blue above. 
But there was a charm in that morning to millions of 
hearts, of which this of nature was but the expressive sym- 
bol, — a charm which it would have worn, though it had 
come swathed in darkness and cradled in storm. It was a 
morning which kindling anticipations had beckoned on its 
way ; which had been prospectively hallowed and glorified 
for the blessed promise that it bore, as through a hundred 
days and nights it ripened to fulfilment. 

Friends, I offer no apology for making the event referred 
to the theme of my discourse to-day. Indeed, I could do no 
otherwise. It has to me a sacred importance, a holy signifi- 
cance. God is in it. His providence has wrought it out. Not 
by the will of man, but of God, has it come. Christ is in it ; 
— He who was sent " to preach deliverance to the captives, 



to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the- accepta- 
ble year of the Lord." They who find cause for rejoicing in 
that heavenly advent we have just commemorated, — how 
can they help but find it in this which has clearly flowed 
therefrom, as stream from fountain ? They whose hearts re- 
sponded to the " Gloria in Excelsis," whose strains have but 
just died away from our churches, — how can they help but 
exult in an event which, so far as it goes, is a fulfilment of 
that prophetic song, that promise-laden chorus ? — fulfilment 
partial, indeed, and greatly itself prophetic and promissory, 
but yet a fulfilment, — actual, sure ; and over which, I 
doubt not, that angel-host, noting with rejoicing hearts the 
advances of the kingdom they heralded, sang anew, " Glory 
to God in the highest, on earth peace, good-will towards 
men ? " Shall wo be indifferent at what is moving them ? 
Shall we not gratefully hail this providential result, — not as 
patriots merely, not alone for what of success may be poten- 
tially enfolded in it to our nation's cause, but as Christian 
philanthropists, as friends of human progress and human free- 
dom, as looking and hoping for that time, — which, indeed, 
we pray for, if for anything, when we say, " Thy kingdom 
come," — that time when Christ's birth-song shall be all ful- 
filled, — "good-will towards men" be the breath of every 
heart and the motion of every hand, — "peace on earth" 
reign on its eternal foundations, — " Glory to God in the 
liighest" be chanted in the aspirations and melodize the life 
of universal humanity ? 

Evidently, we do not see — we of these loyal communi- 
ties — the moral magnitude and grandeur of this edict of 
Emancipation, — do not take in its vast proportions and mo- 
mentous bearings and blessed issues. There is, somehow, a 



striking»waiit of correspondence between what has now been 
affirmed of it, and what seems to be the tone, or the degree, 
of the general feeling about it. What seems to be, I say. 
For that there is a deep feeling in thousands of hearts all 
around us, I cannot doubt ; an exultant thankfulness, — a 
feeling too deep for words, for outward demonstrations, — a 
feeling which the genius of Music, voiced in the immortal 
compositions of its divinest masters, has nearest to ade- 
quately expressed. Yes, I know there were those who wept 
for joy that that day had come ; who thanked God on bended 
knees that they had lived to see it ; who were ready to say, 
with holy Simeon, " Lord, now lettest thou thy servant de- 
part in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation." I 
spoke with one of these yesterday ; — one who had felt, in 
her own person, the insult and curse of Slavery, until, in 
the might of an intrepid womanhood, she escaped from it ; 
and who goes to-morrow, in an overflowing sympathy, to re- 
new her self-devoting labors among the " contrabands " at 
Alexandria ; — one whose native refinement and true gentil- 
ity and quick intelligence exceed that of how many ! who, in 
the drawing-rooms of freedom, spurn such, because of the 
complexion God has given them, though it be — as hers is 
— but a few shades darker than their own. She, and such 
as she, chattels ! another's " property " ! classed with horses 
and swine, in the slaveholder's inventory ! Ah, it needs to 
have seen the victims that Slavery has crushed, to have seen 
on whoyn and on ivhat its accursed heel has trod ; it needs to 
have felt its heel, to have been its victim, duly to appreciate 
that majestic word, issuing from the nation's supreme exec- 
utive, saying, for three million enslaved men and women, — 
" This no more, forever." And for the rest, I would chari- 



6 

tably believe, as I have said, that their iiidifferenot is less 
actual than seeming, and that what of indifference they have 
is referable to a certain blindness of vision rather than hard- 
ness of heart, — is referable, whichever it be, to influences 
flowing from the tolerated presence of slavery in the land. 
That moral Upas has so poisoned the whole social atmos- 
phere of American life, that the heart's instinctive sympa- 
thies with freedom and justice, its finer sensibilities, its nicer 
discernments in this direction, have suffered, unconsciously, 
in instances innumerable, a partial paralysis and decline. 
So long familiar have we been with the base incongruity of 
a free republic admitting chattel-slavery among its institu- 
tions, and protecting it by organic law, that many fail to feel 
and to see the baseness ; and have, of course, no heart to re- 
joice in an act which is the sure beginning of the end of it 
forever. And then, again, we are too near the event, per- 
haps, historically, to be duly impressed by it. It has come 
upon us too gradually ; it has been too much and too long 
contemplated and discussed as a matter of policy ; sentiment 
and principle have had too little to do with its inception and 
progress, and been too little appealed to in its behalf, for the 
general heart to flame, at its coming, with the moral enthu- 
siasm which in truth it claims. The fact, moreover, that its 
scope is partial, — that its results are conceived of, by many, 
as problematical, in respect alike to those it frees and the 
nation freeing them, — helps preclude such enthusiasm. 

But truly, friends, we should try to see these things which 
are transpiring around us as tliey arc ; to do justice to them, 
in tliought and in feeling ; and especially this of which I 
speak, inaugurating a new year and a new era. As a relig- 
ious duty should wc try to do it. God forbid wc should live 



at such a time, and not feel the privilege of it, and the re- 
sponsibility and the solemnity and the glory ; and not put 
ourselves within the play of the electric currents, and drink 
in of the inspirations, of the mighty hour. For, doubt it as 
we may, it is a time which, beyond all others, since the peo- 
pling of these American shores, will be historically lumi- 
nous : which the student of the past — not alone the philo- 
sophic, but the devout — will ponder, with glowing interest 
and deepest thoughtfulness ; to which the religious mind will 
turn to feed its faith in an overruling and retributive Provi- 
dence in the affairs of men. Do I over-estimate its impor- 
tance ? Why, look, and see what is transpiring, in literal 
fact, around us ! Powers, ideas, principles, most antagonistic 
to each other in all the universe of God, in directest and 
grappling conflict. Truth and falsehood, righteousness and 
injustice, freedom and despotism, taking shape in mightiest 
armies ; half a continent the arena of the struggle ; distant 
nations reaching to behold it ; treasure and life beyond hu- 
man computation the lavish sacrifice ; a people least war- 
like on earth throwing itself, as in a day, into teeming 
camps ; sending a soldier from every household ; and, fight- 
ing, first, for its own rights and liberties, finding itself fight- 
ing for the rights and liberties of others, of the helpless, the 
enslaved, — those to whose wrongs it had selfishly consented, 
but whose welfare it comes to see as linked indissolubly 
with its own ; finding itself, while striking with one liand for 
its own deliverance, loosing with the other the shackles of the 
slave ; issuing, at last, in self-defence, and yet not without 
a justice-loving satisfaction, the mandate at which millions 
pass from chattels into citizens, from merchandise into men. 
Such are some of the aspects of this mighty era in more 
immediate connection with the event we celebrate. 



I recur to that. God, I said, was in it. Most impressively 
so. I know no fact in history that shows more clearly the 
working of a Divine hand and purpose, — shows how, though 
"man proposes, God disposes." Plainly, man has meant 
one thing by this war, and God another. And that which 
God has meant by it, he has caused to be borne along, as on 
a resistless tide, alike by our successes and defeats. God has 
meant by it, so far as we may read his meaning in the glow- 
ing language of events, to destroy slavery ; that the blows of 
the contending hosts, directed against each other, should fall, 
as well, and both alike, upon that wicked system in whose 
interest the contest was inaugurated. We sought in it but 
the maintenance of our nationality. God has sought in and 
by it the redemption and elevation of his bound and down- 
trodden children. He has caused our selfishness to open a 
pathway for his own benevolence. Forever blessed be his 
name for the mercy in this — all undeserved — to ourselves. 
More and more slavery was weakening, debasing, poisoning 
lis as a people. It was lowering the tone of our politics, of 
our religion, of our manhood. It was taking the life and 
soul out of us. We were tending by it, judicially and re- 
tributively, into materialism and atheism, into a hardness of 
heart as impious as inhuman. It was the millstone about 
the nation's neck, dragging it to perdition ; the cancer with- 
in its system, threatening disease, if it had not already im- 
parted it, to every fibre of its life. We did not see it so. 
God saw it. His prophets saw it, and told their vision. ]>ut 
they were scorned, and bid to silence. And when slavery, 
in the insanity of iniquity, made war upon freedom, freedom 
then — though it knew that slavery as an institution was 
the sole cause of the rebellion, and that there could be no 



9 

peace with its continuance — sought no destruction of it, no 
crippling of it; nay, deprecated every measure looking to 
such result, carefully avoided the blow that might weaken or 
disturb it, made it the one thing which it would by no means 
touch, though more and more its fiendish hideousness ap- 
peared. The compromises of the Constitution must, at all 
events, be respected. Had Freedom been victorious in those 
earlier battles, she would probably have dictated such terms 
to Slavery as would have left it its constitutional advantages, 
have given it a new lease of power, new chances for securing 
in Cabinet and Senate-chamber what it had failed of in the 
field. It was the reverses of Freedom, the bloody disasters, 
the mortifying defeats, the fields strewn with her man- 
gled and gasping sons, — these, which — short-sighted mor- 
tals ! — we mourned over as the direst of calamities, — it was 
these by which God saved us. By those losses was the na- 
tion's gain, by those deaths its life. Success, in bringing 
with it peace by compromise, had been its own living death. 
Precious cost ! But we had made it necessary. Our own 
guilty compliances and complicities with the demands and 
sin of slavery, for the sake of peace and prosperity, — a 
nominal peace, a hollow prosperity, — this had made it ne- 
cessary. We had sowed to the wind, and the only reaping 
possible to us was the whirlwind. Yes, there was a mercy 
in those dark reverses, those long delays, those baffled coun- 
sels. For then only, when it was found that Freedom could 
not stand against her foes with their " institution" intact, and 
their victim-millions working against her, did she consent to 
disregard the provisions of the Constitution, and strike at that 
institution itself. Then only had it come to pass, that, as a 

war measure and a necessity of war, by the right accorded all 
2 



10 

governments of self-defence, by a law of nature overriding all 
human enactments, this could constitutionally be done. 

Pause, now, and consider the workings of the Almighty ! 
A score of months only ago, and the overthrow of slavery 
seemed, to the wisest and most far-seeing among us, an event 
which the century, possibly, might sec, but whose possibility 
was located far away in the dim distance ; to be achieved by 
the slowly-working influences of an advancing Christianity, 
or by its own savage and revengeful hands. The way 
seemed hedged by insuperable difficulties. There it stood, 
intrenched within the Constitution, conscious of its mighty 
power, haughty, defiant ; and well knowing that, with all its 
other securities, it had friends and defenders among our- 
selves. The strife came on : it continued : it is yet. But 
now, above its smoke and din and groans and death, comes 
the voice of the nation's chief magistrate, — standing in his 
place of power, clothed in the majesty at once of constitu- 
tional and of moral law, — proclaiming deliberately, calmly, 
that from this blessed first of January, 18G3, three million 
of slavery's victims are " henceforth and forever free." Tru- 
ly, " this is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our 
eyes." Yes, give God the glory. We can take none of it 
ourselves. It is an event forced upon us. Blindly and un- 
designedly have we wrought for it. Step by step we have 
fought against it. Not, I repeat, by the will of man, but of 
God, has it come. Glory be to God! 

What has come ? " Only a proclamation," say some, — "a 
state paper, with the signature of the President, declaring 
the slaves of certain localities free ; but that does not make 
them so : it is still dependent on the fortunes of the war 
how soon, or whether at all, they obtain their freedom." I 



11 

have no sympathy with that disposition which receives ques- 
tioningly what is in itself a precious gift, because it is not 
the most precious conceivable or desired ; nor with the dis- 
trust implied by such questioning, in the case before us, of 
the Great Giver's will and power to perfect it. When he has 
made a way for what is through such ranks of obstacles, — 
a way which human wisdom never by so much as a glimpse 
foresaw, — I will not doubt that the way will be opened, by 
the same wonder-working Providence, for what we desire 
shall be. God will not leave his work unfinished, — nor de- 
layed, but by our unfaithfulness. That most of those held in 
slavery, if not all, have long known that the day of their re- 
demption was drawing nigh, was as good as come, — though 
doubtless, in many instances, with conceptions very vague 
and crude about it, — this none doubt who know anything of 
them. And it serves to explain the most remarkable quiet- 
ness maintained by them through all this wide-spread and 
land-rocking tumult of which they are the innocent cause ; 
that patient willingness to wait in their old position until the 
door of their egress from it was fairly opened, and they could 
go out as recognized men, and not as skulking beasts. How 
greatly have we mistaken and done injustice to the negro 
character and disposition, in predicting, as from the begin- 
ning so many have, violence and bloodshed on the part of 
the slaves, in the intoxication of anticipated freedom, or the 
impulse of vindictive passion. There has been nothing of 
it, — nothing at all. A fact that speaks volumes for them. 
For while it may be ascribed in part to their assurance of 
coming freedom, — an assurance which there has been so 
shamefully much, in the bearing towards them of our gov- 
ernment and army, to weaken, — it is yet more to be ascribed 



12 

to a gentleness, and amiability, and unvindictiveness of dis- 
position, which, as a race, they eminently possess. They 
have known, I said, that their freedom was at hand. They 
know that it is proclaimed. And knowing it, they will de- 
mand — as they ought — possession of it; and will have it. 
But were it so, that the fact of freedom should long tarry 
behind the date of its proclamation, the proclamation is 
the mighty fact. There it stands, irrevocable, sure, — the 
guaranty of their liberty, valid against the world ; the char- 
ter of citizenship, which a nation's power stands pledged to 
guard, — which whoso fails to respect as such does so at his 
peril. Before it "bills of sale" turn to waste-paper; and 
chain and handcuff melt, as in the fervent heat of a thou- 
sand suns ; and forms stand erect, and eyes brighten, and 
burdens drop, and life and the world put on a new signifi- 
cance, and bud and blossom with new blessings. And, more 
than this, and whatever else it does, or fails to do, it decrees 
the nation's emancipation. Not strictly, — for the guaranties 
of slavery, untouched by this edict, linger on its statute- 
book, — but, practically, it decrees the nation's emancipation. 
It has broken from its ignoble and debasing thrall. It has 
spoken, at last, that magic word, " Freedom," never to un- 
learn it. It has set its face towards the sun, never to turn 
backward. It has brought itself into harmony with the 
spirit of the ago, — with its own immortal principles and 
sacred declarations. It has floated itself into the life-stream 
of Christian civilization. It has put itself right with God ; 
so that it may ask his blessing on its cause without doubt- 
fulness, — may feel that the eternal forces of his spiritual 
providence shall surely work for it. 

Slavery can be no more the potent agency in the nation 



13 

it has been, — potent for evil, and only evil. Thank God 
the Power whose corrupting influence has permeated every 
tissue and pore of the body politic ; which has suborned to its 
ends, so greatly, our public men ; has controlled presses, 
has marshalled parties, has silenced pulpits, tampered with 
the very heralds of salvation and the very Gospel of the Re- 
deemer, and debauched the public conscience to believe a 
lie ; which more than anything else — here in the midst of 
us, and all over the land — has impeded the progress of God's 
kingdom, — this Satanic Power, this instituted Barbarism, is 
forever dethroned, and lingers but to die. And for nothing, 
as for this, should our hearts so thank God to-day. 

Now, I believe, a new day is to open upon our country, — 
day of prosperity, glory, power, and peace, such as it has 
never known, nor any nation of the world before it. Now, 
as before we could not, may we have a united country, now 
a real prosperity, now an abiding peace; — blessings, en- 
hanced by the thought that our brethren of the South, now 
our foes, shall share them with us. Not, of course, that the 
removal of slavery alone is to do all this, but that in its 
removal the great obstacle is no more. The spirit of Wrong 
embodies itself in more than one institution. In forms 
innumerable it is all around us, enough to task to the 
utmost every energy of philanthropy. But now will there 
be a better heart to labor against it, better hopes and 
chances of success. That trial, suffering, disorder, evils 
of various sorts, will come as incidental to this very good 
of emancipation, is, of course, to be expected. No great 
social revolution can come and progress without them. 
The change from coerced to voluntary labor, when the la- 
borers are numbered by millions, is a vast one, and things 



14 

cannot speedily, or without trouble, adjust themselves to it. 
But with wisdom and uprightness, witli a guiding love of 
justice and humanity, with a renouncement of that mean 
and wicked prejudice against color which has so greatly pos- 
sessed us, who can doubt but that all difficulties, with God's 
blessing, will be overcome ? The question is often asked, 
" What shall be done with the freed blacks ? " in a tone 
implying tlic belief that they must necessarily be a public 
burden and charge. As if their labor was not all needed ; 
as if they who have taken care of their masters and them- 
selves too, could not take care of themselves alone ; as if 
they were not susceptible to the motives which sway hu- 
man nature generally. There is another question, preced- 
ing this in importance, and which, rightly answered, and the 
answer put faithfully into act, would go far to lessen any 
difficulties connected with the former one, — the question, 
namely, " What shall be done for them ? " or better, this, 
" In what spirit shall they be dealt with ? " Welcomed with 
the respect which their nature claims, with the kindness and 
good-will which their former wrongs more abundantly entitle 
them to, — welcomed thus to the humanizing and elevating 
influences — social, intellectual, moral — which the age af- 
fords, who can doubt what response their lives would show ? 
— that, a})proaclied and treated as men, they would show 
themselves such ? that, educated for the duties and trusts 
of citizenship, they would be found equal to them ? The 
moral obligation met, will enlighten for whatever practical 
demands their condition may present. The first duty done, 
God will show, as he always does, the next, — and lead and 
bless us in it. " Who shall roll us away the stone from the 
door of the sepulchre ? " asked the women, mournfully ; for 



15 

the stone was very great. But when they came to the sepul- 
chre an angel had already descended and rolled it away. 
" So let us go with sweet spices, not to embalm a dead, but 
to anoint a risen Lord, in the person of these poor, despised 
ones ; and never fear but that we shall not only find the stone 
rolled back, but shall stand face to face with an angel, of 
heavenly brightness, and what was a sepulchre of death shall 
■*^ be the temple of the Lord of life." 



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